Selected Poems (1974-1999)

PIECED TOGETHER OUT OF OLD DISCONTINUOUS MOMENTS LIKE NOW 
 
 
Buddha said find 
out for yourself 
 
so people came and 
asked him how to do it 
 
history repeats itself (but not as 
often as you hear that repeated) 
 
the smell of a rose does 
not replace its roots 



     *****
                             How To Live As A Single Natural Being
                                        (For Charles Olson)


Breathe in and out but live in the space between breaths.
Let your thoughts be breaths and find the space between.
Eat breakfast with friends
 and love your enemies because they offer you the opportunity to be triumphant.
Thereafter, benign indifference is the best revenge.
Take a long walk every day even if only in your mind.
Study yourself constantly, but believe yourself never.
Forget whatever you can.



      *****



A POEM FOR OFFICER ROBLES (B.P.D. BADGE #26) 
 
 
you called me a weirdo 
 while in your world newborn babes are left in dumpsters 
 and the forests are clear-cut for fastfood packaging 
you called me a weirdo 
 while in your world police plant evidence to entrap 
 those presumed guilty by some official prejudice 
you called me a weirdo 
 while in your world the masters make profits on nuclear overkill 
 and people with AIDS are blamed for living at all 
you called me a weirdo 
 hell yes i'm a weirdo! 
 in your world i wouldn't have it any other way 

 

     *****



THE ONLY POEM


How can you ever hope to explain the unexplainable?
You may as well try to give voice to the ineffable.
Far better to speak about the sourgrass in bloom.
Its iridescent yellow flowers bright as day.



    ***** 



 MY FAITH 
 
 
 There is no place in the desert 
 to hide from the sun. 
 There is no way to shelter 
 in the shade of your own shadow. 
 If all that is is form, if empty 
 representations are all that exist 
 then I can never know my own 
 non-existence, nor is anything 
 communicated by the word of 
"void". 
 A poem begins in silence, 
 in silence it ends, 
 how very like my universe. 



     *****


 
                                      last night in a bar i drank 
beer and lectured about an understanding i have whenever i'm not 
lecturing 
i called a sanatarium in fremont from a pay phone       cars and 
friends going by at sixty      this woman i love keeps trying to 
kill herself and me i've given up on it      and her      and me 
 
                      i say i love everybody but i don't mean it 
                 when i do 

 
 
     *****


 
THE EYES OF WHEN 
 
 
I walked the only way I could when hot dreams went on alone 
Not giving in to reality 
Only jutting fibers remembering light 
Not ancient 
Dreaming loneliness instead, and houses where loneliness is given out 
It's the empty reality 
Yet, my heart rages in love, and no one who's watched me cry has been there 


 
     ***** 


 
     LAST NIGHT IN LAMU 
 
 
Tiny black ants in the bathroom 
'Will that T-shirt never dry?' 
Woke last dawn 
A donkey braying in the courtyard 
Ceaseless fan beating African rhythms 
All night long 
Main Street is six feet wide 
"Stand back for the rag man's cart!" 
And in the moonless black beauty I'm afraid of what? 
Only myself 
Dusk, and the mournful chant of unseen muezzins tingles in the heavy air 



     *****



    DREAM

 
We sit in the meadow 
 almost touching 
Your eyes request my lips 
 "I've never felt this close to anyone," you whisper 
I can't move 
I want to kiss your shoulder 
 with my hand 
I can't speak 
I want to say, "I love you" 
I just gaze into your eyes 
Our faces are so close together 



     *****
 

 
              PROJECT UNIVERSE 
 
 
first, a physical reality 
 jars of elements 
      clutter a table in front of Carl Sagan 
 he explains what they all are 
   and says that the only difference between him and them 
       is how he and they are organized 
but he's not quite right 
"how" is a part of it, 
      but "what" is a more important part 
 is what organizes Carl Sagan different than what organizes me? 
 our chemicals are virtually the same, but our psyches?  do we have psyches? 
perhaps Carl doesn't, but he must have chemicals organized as a brain 
 
secondly, this brain operates by instinct 
 instinct underlies waking consciousness 
          and dreaming is purely instinctual 
 
 thirdly, semantic thought and the logic of grammar 
          define consciousness 
 
fourthly, desire and distaste may give rise to losing and winning 
 
fifth, is the heart of the matter 
      the vision 
          from its brilliant fullness of noon 
              to its subtle canvas of twilight 
                  from its indigo blot of midnight 
                      to the most glorious epiphanies of its blazing dawn: 
         it's who you are not how you are 
 
 six: you must have a direction 
you shall choose and act 
 
seven: be pleased to pay all debts (you may only cheat in your own universe) 
 
 eight: teardrops still permitted 
 
 nine: laughter only 
 
there is a tenth one also 

 
 
     ***** 
 
 
 
THE MUSIC OF TEARS 
 
 
rhythm creaking chair 
where do words arise? 
and how can I let them flow? 
a tree is falling, the money's gone, tea has few calories 
diet root beer will not save America 
eternity laughs at the edifice of man 
"the universe is nothing!" is no answer 
the serious fool cries tears of laughter 
creation is parthenogenesis 
but the Parthians have gone 
the way of all empires is death 
the fool is sacrificed to love 
the love is filled with pain 
the pain is really joy 
and symmetry is imbalance righting itself by tilting the world 
 
I am not Archimedes 
am I not dying? 
can life go on forever? 
can nonexistence exist? 
is futility the Moon in Aquarius? 
is poetry the moon in my eyes? 
 
we love each other 
which is why we never see each other 
the pain is too great to bear 
all those dreams 
and the reality tastes like sawdust 
the floor is covered with slime 
which neither of us will kneel and wipe away 
my liver is fairly busting with bile 
your stomach is ready to burst 
we cannot ignore our organs forever 


 
     *****

 
 
there is something about 
clear night skies 
that whispers to me 
in countless unseen stars 
like unheard songs 
behind the cold black desert wind 



     *****



ITALIAN POEM 
 
 
the street 
ingenuous as dying 
reclines in garden light 
a body of acacias is rustling 
a thrush waits around to observe the end 
 
thousands of acid kids in windows 
rows of Adriatic toughs in muddy threadbare 
corners of the breeze, dust undershirts 
ardent Sabines barred from some impoverished mountains 
 
long lime Calvary faces pass by, thick and low 
slowly closer to the sacred monuments 
the indescribable wet heap of the vice houses 
as thousands sit in the kisses of a gesture 
 
a fog of sweat is on the world 
the sun's hand sharpens fast 
a little inferno 



     *****



               UH OH! 
 
 
    West meets East in my lifetime 
  To not think in words, a poem turned religion 
Transpersonal Psychology meet Vajrayana Buddhism 
George Harrison          meet Ravi Shankar 
Reason                   meet Love 
Folly                    meet Wisdom 
  A union of opposites goes on all the time 
    according to Buddha, Epicurus, and Hegel 
 
John hangs on the door 
out of focus 
Above him 
a mask is playing 
I'm down in the kitchen 
 
An echo of Bruce 
on the telephone upstairs 
"Stop Sex" glaring from the refrigerator 
Wind clapping in a neighbor's pillowcases 
Sufficience clumping on the back steps 
 
Is this really the kitchen? 
Am I really at all? 
I doubt therefore I am 
But should I be? 
Uh oh! 



     *****


 
             LET ME SPEND TIME BEHIND ROSES 
 
 
I loved you, going through palaces my fingertips built unknowing 
         My one murmur thirsted through forests of shining salute 
                          You are a landscape, yet stand beside me 
 
That you are young outdarkens secrets 
            Countless ways you've sung 
                    You are a live body 
 
  Kings were once dazzled at your sun-mouth 
               I feel a strange tender scent 
  You are a nest which must give off perfumes 
 
     Out of your triple window crawls an octopus 
              Unfathomable spiders scrape you clean 
       Closer hearts sing in your house of floral beat 
         A light of eel-hunters tints your northern tower 
                    You are the violet ink of dying orchards 
 
                      Our now lies bare 
   Little children fight for lonely masks 
              The roses are trying to chime 
      My blossoms are eyes to hear the garden 



     *****

 
  
night falls heavy in the olive grove 
wolves go walking hand in hand 
   through wild thickets 
             oaks grow over prelates 
and flowers over the already dead 
      birds and black coolness 
             where night is 
 
                  your lips are wild 
                  your wall of songs 
     a golden boat of resting gentle 



     *****


 
  AIWAZ 
 
 
I was going to write about the trance of the universal joke 
& tears of joy and all that 
but instead I want to write about Jack's Elixir Bar 
where earlier I communed with the Gods, a pint of Harp 
& a pint of cider 
It was, like much of the world these days 
a palace of Nuit, a chapel of Babalon 
a wishing-well of fitful dreams 
no longer really real 
And the joy of letting go 
relaxing, being truly where 
and when I realized that 
Gertrude Stein ("There is no 
there there") owned a lot 
in the City of P's-- 
well it made me glad 
I love you 



     *****
 
 

   GREEN TARA 
 
 
   (the keys dance and the locks open) 
she shines a golden ray 
   (electric light increases dark) 
her gown of knitted seaweed 
   (the age is dawning) 
open at the breast 
   (every day is dawning in rootlessness) 
a smile without eyes or soul 
   (every age in time) 
and reaches up to loose her dress 
   (every key in its lock) 
and reaches out to draw me close 
   (open door)                     jai devi! 
                           show me your love! 



     *****



from "13 PSALMS FOR NU"



  0

 one cannot call her by her dream name
 her only name cannot be called
 her ears can soak up any whisper
 her heart each tongue can touch with song
 her tears are only to bathe
 the circumstantial bathysphere
 which all souls think a mirror
 and all fools know a veil

 I declare a name
 I defy lips to speak it
 or pens to write it
 or gods to will it
 even this egg


  1

 One star
 in the company of stars
 on occasion,
 and one light
 in the loneliness of night
 on occasion,
 and one note
 in the key of be
 occurs
 continually,
 packed discretely
 in bite-sized bundles
 of timelessness
 not being

  2

 Nowhere was it said, this thing
 which the dead whisper in dreams
 of the living, this thought
 which universal Mind, unknowing,
 thinks again and again.
 For how many countless regenerations?
 How many times have I penned these lines?
 And what is the difference
 between five and six,
 in the infinite series of integers?
 Yet one thing I do know:
 that wedged in the middle is zero.  

  3

 Babalon
 is a
 very beautiful woman.
 Seven stars shine in
 her body of one vagina,
 her mouth of one scarlet anus.
 Like teeth they shine, like purple cockheads,
 for her womb bears the egg that bears
 the whale that is the snake that eats its
 tail. Babalon is a very beautiful tree; her roots are
 deep in the fertile soil boiling with worms and hair and
 corpses-- bones and teeth, a necklace of skulls, an anklet of eyes,
 a garland of flowers, a lei for the hula of lust, red dance
 of her mouth which wets so eagerly to drink the lion's hot white blood.  

  4

 On the violet verge of paradise
 a shining snake from the lion flies.
 He finds refuge in the eagle's nest
 and with her eggs is thrice thrice-blest.
 And there their hearts the worm entwines.
 The fire of bliss shoots up their spines
 and down the eagle, now a dove,
 descends ablaze in fluid love.
 The kiss of Nu, the point of Had!
 O Ra Hoor Khu, unveiling god!
 If it be pleasing to thine eye
 let us the wine of joy imbibe!

  5

 A picture grows upon the wall,
 telling tales of giants,
 while seasons march right through it all,
 inconquerably quiet.
 There bellies burst with berries from
 the first most festive feast of Spring.
 There Summer burns with vital force
 and War and Love make fitting kings,
 while Autumn's judgement sits in courts
 whose sentences the harvest brings,
 and Winter prisons freeze and crack
 like sharp reports of armed attack,
 and all the dreams of painters die
 each time one flower blooms again.

  6

 The angel won't talk
 so I'm forced to take desperate measures,
 "I'm holding this body hostage
 until you tell me what I want to know!"
 "Go ahead.", said the angel,
 "Pull the trigger",
 her glow began to burn,
 "I've been planning to kill it anyway!"
 And at that the earth shook,
 heaven fell, and I was me.

  9

 I wonder if the Sun our father
 loves with all his heart and soul
 the luring Lyran, milk-white Vega,
 drinking in her photon glow.
 I wonder if their orbits bring them
 once together in one place
 and in a dance of gravitation
 the marriage bed they celebrate.
 I wonder when the merging comes
 if men of earth will understand
 and leap with joy to join the feast
 and rush to greet the dawn's hot death
 and melt, with love, to kiss Nuit
 that now their father's found his mate.

  10

 A still, small voice spoke up
 from the back of the burning bus.
 "Driver,
 why am I talking to myself?",
 it said.
 "Because there ain't nobody
 but me, buddy.",
 the driver mused,
 as if anyone else could hear.
 I got off at Church and Market.
 Forgetfulness, sleep, and death.  



     *****



THE MYSTERIES OF MASTER THERION 
 
 
Filled with the sight he went searching. 
Believing in excitement and pious Antichrist, 
 he sought confirmation. 
He walked each path, but on stones. 
He dared to dream the Lord's City. 
He entered in astonishment where bakers pronounce the Suffering One. 
 
Northward was full of thundering. 
He came south to the Great Island of the dark burning. 
There Life's God laid a silver sea. 
There, on a Hill, he dug the miracle Body. 
 
He is the One, and also the Paul, 
 who was another Joseph, another baptized by holy Ananias. 
The ruby and Him are all, they have that stream of precious books, 
 that fine gentle grace. 
We are red, surpassing wonders of books and gemstones. 
Above these wretched rubies of malady, all is clear. 
 
 The mysteries descend to the Host, 
"Twelve has significance to Twelve." 
 
The Faith world shall have faith in stones. 
Its subject is fallen in excessive approach, 
 and compelled to bewilderment. 
 
A Miner went into the City of Death, 
 beyond the Goddess of Dreadful Things, 
 and there He told Man's story 
Where celebrants protect the sacred wall, 
 He sang.